POLITICAL NOTES

POLITICAL NOTES; When Is a Fact Not a Fact? When It's a Statistic.

By ALAN FINDER

Published: April 25, 1993

The Democratic mayoral primary is still five months off, but accusations -- accompanied by statistical jousting -- are already flying up. Mayor David N. Dinkins and his chief Democratic opponent, City Council President Andrew J. Stein, squared off last week on a point that Mr. Stein has been pressing for months: his contention that the Mayor has cut more than $700 million from the city's schools over the last four years.

Mr. Stein has argued often that Mr. Dinkins has let down the city's students, and perhaps even imperiled the city's future, by underfinancing the school system. "This administration has cut more than $700 million from the Board of Education," Mr. Stein said at a Democratic candidates forum last week in Brooklyn. "That's a fact."

But the Mayor insisted that it is not. He maintained that, even in the midst of the worst recession in a generation, he had made sure that the city's contribution to the Board of Education's budget "has increased each year that I have been Mayor."

Who is right? As is often true in politics, each candidate has a legitimate statistical basis for his claim.

According to financial data provided by the Mayor's press secretary, Leland T. Jones, the city's contribution to the school board increased each year from 1989 to 1992, and is tentatively set to go up again this year. In 1989, the city gave the schools $2.98 billion; by 1992, $3.42 billion.

Mr. Stein is so adamant on the point that, after going to his car at the end of the candidates' meeting, he returned to a cluster of reporters outside the House of the Lord Pentecostal Church in downtown Brooklyn, where the forum was held, to reiterate his claim. He said, in response to a question, that the Mayor had reduced, in actual dollars, the city's contributions to the schools each year.

But Mr. Stein's aides said the next day that the Council President had meant to say that the Mayor had reduced the city's contribution each year from the amounts it had planned to give to the school board in the city budgets approved each June. These cuts were part of a broad effort by the Dinkins administration to trim costs in virtually all city agencies.

The city's cuts against its own plans -- which amounted to $777 million in the last three years -- caused the Board of Education to slash programs, including reducing supplies and the numbers of guidance counselors, said Susan Wiviott, an assistant to Mr. Stein. "What they've cut is program money," Ms. Wiviott said. Awaiting Cuomo's Nod

Gov. Mario M. Cuomo has yet to speak about whom he will recommend as the next chairman of New York's Democratic Party, but names have started to emerge from his aides and political associates.

Mentioned most consistently is Al Gordon, a longtime Cuomo aide who is currently the Governor's director of legislative and intergovernmental affairs. Mr. Gordon has been involved in most of Mr. Cuomo's campaigns and served as the director of the Dukakis campaign in New York in 1988.

Other possibilities include Judith Hope, the former first vice chairwoman of the state party, Secretary of State Gail S. Shaffer, and Edward Szczesniak, the Democratic chairman of Onondaga County, which includes Syracuse.

The Democratic State Committee plans to meet on May 15 to ratify Mr. Cuomo's selection. The new chairman will succeed John A. Marino, who is joining a Manhattan investment firm.

The Cuomo aides said the Governor could also choose someone not being mentioned prominently at this time. And they said his decision would depend largely on whether he chooses someone to serve simultaneously as chairman and executive director, as Mr. Marino did, or he divides the tasks between two people. Joining in the March

The march may be in Washington, but so will be many New York City voters.

Several political figures from the city say they will take part in today's demonstration for equal rights for gay Americans, which is expected to draw 300,000 people to the nation's capital from the New York area.

Mayor David N. Dinkins and his likely challenger in the Democratic mayoral primary, City Council President Andrew J. Stein, say they will attend, as will Comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman and Ruth W. Messinger, the Manhattan Borough President.

They will be joined by Assemblywoman Deborah J. Glick of Manhattan, the Legislature's only openly gay member, and Councilman Thomas K. Duane, who is also gay.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Dinkins's likely Republican opponent, is staying in New York City to raise money for his campaign, his aides said. Hitting the Screen, by Mail

The race for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in New Jersey has been run with the kind of stealth and scramble for strategic advantage that once marked the cold war.

It began with a build-up of press releases delivered by hand, mail or fax machine from each of the three major candidates: Christine Todd Whitman, Cary Edwards and James Wallwork. The fight has moved to community-access cable television channels and to the radio airwaves, where the candidates have pounded one another and Gov. Jim Florio, a Democrat.

All of this is leading toward a blitz in the final weeks before the June 8 primary, when expensive television ads will air on New York City and Philadelphia stations because there is no single television outlet that covers all of New Jersey.

Late last week, Mr. Edwards introduced an intermediate weapon that he hopes will help him overtake Mrs. Whitman in the polls: his campaign began mailing videotapes to registered Republicans across the state. The cover of the tape shows a harsh visage of Mr. Florio, with the caption, "Retire this guy: only one Republican can (Hint: Cary Edwards)."

On Friday, the chief political strategist for the Edwards campaign, J. Brian Smith, gave journalists in Trenton a preview of the 9-minute, 29 second video. It opens with a string of attacks on Florio policies on taxes, crime and education, then touts Mr. Edwards's virtues before ending with a scene showing Mrs. Whitman with a tennis racquet under one arm and luggage on the other.

Mr. Wallwork is ignored.

Mr. Smith declined to say exactly how many videotapes were being mailed. But he said the number was more than the 100,000 videos Mr. Edwards sent out four years ago when he finished second in the race for the nomination.